Only IE8_64bit will open - No IE, FF, or Chrome

[grizzly]

Windows 7 Home Prem. 64 bit.

A pretty new (2week old) Windows 7 install. I use Chrome for my browser. This morning, Chrome would not start. I tried to use IE and it will not start. I re-installed Chrome and it still will not start. I downloaded FF and installed and it will not start. Only IE 64bit will run. When I try to start any of the 32bit browsers, I can see the process momentarily in the task manager process list, but it goes away after a few seconds and the browser never starts. All of my other applications are fine, only my browsers. What could have happened to keep 32bit browsers from starting ?

 

[cluberti]

Sounds more like an issue with 32bit applications in general than a browser issue. What happens if you open windows explorer, browse to C:\windows\syswow64, and double-click notepad.exe to open the 32bit notepad from that location?

 

[grizzly]

Thanks for the reply. In my original post, I said:
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" All of my other applications are fine, only my browsers"
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There was no problem opening and using all 32 bit applications including openoffice, notepad, mozilla thunderbird, Adobe Acrobat, and everything else. The ONLY 32 bit apps that wouldn't open was any kind of web browser including FF, Chrome and IE. every other 32 bit app worked with no problem. I wonder if it's possible I might have gotten some malware on it since I hadn't installed any AV yet ? I've already formatted and re-installed the OS because it was a new install and there wasn't really anything to lose but it was a pretty strange problem, and I needed to get it going again.

 

[cluberti]

On an x64 os, most apps are x64 native, so without a point of reference I suggested what I suggested. However, since you have other 32bit apps obviously the wow64 subsystem is fine. At that point, you may be right that it could have indeed been malware of some sort, although without a debug or a procmon log we can't be sure of course.